Amy Webb: Smartphones will be gone in 10 years

“Yes, in the year 2027 we will see the end of smartphones as we know them. What is today the most modern phone will look as outdated as a foldable phone is today.”

This according to the renown futurist Amy Webb. Webb is best known as the author of the annual “Tech Trend Report”, an authoritative account of tomorrow's technologies – and their impact on society.

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In a recent interview with Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter (DN), Webb honed in on the future of smartphones, which, according to her, is an oxymoron. Soon, we will all be using wearables.

“It will be glasses and lenses, rings and wristbands, combined with other types of products. We will be using our vision and voice instead of constantly fingering our phones – and it will be seen as a completely natural development.”

An enabling technology behind wearables is of course Augmented Reality. Silicon Valley giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Google are currently investing billions of dollars in AR, as part of an epic turf war over who gets to define the technology in the coming decade.

All of this will be seen as a relatively small change compared to what is coming up for society – AI will accelerate already 2018 and drive development so it will progress even faster, says Webb.

“There are a number of crucial technologies that are now fusing together, which will create new applications. The algorithms and AI affects us all: we are heading to a landscape that we will not really recognize. How we handle it will have profound consequences for humanity,” Webb tells DN.